Promoting Corporate Sustainability through Integrated Reporting: The Role of Investment Fiduciaries and the Responsibilities of the Corporate Board

Robert G. Eccles; J.  Herron; George  Serafeim

Chapter | Cambridge Handbook of Institutional Investment and Fiduciary Duty | 2014

Promoting Corporate Sustainability through Integrated Reporting: The Role of Investment Fiduciaries and the Responsibilities of the Corporate Board

by Robert G. Eccles, J. Herron and George Serafeim

Abstract

This book is a comprehensive reference work exploring recent changes and future trends in the principles that govern institutional investors and fiduciaries. A wide range of contributors offer new perspectives on dynamics that drive the current emphasis on short-term investment returns. Moreover, they analyze the forces at work in markets around the world, which are bringing into sharper focus the systemic effects that investment practices have on the long-term stability of the economy and the interests of beneficiaries in financial, social, and environmental sustainability. This volume provides a global and multi-faceted commentary on the evolving standards governing institutional investment, offering guidance for students, researchers, and policy makers interested in finance, governance, and other aspects of the contemporary investment world. It also provides investment, business, financial media, and legal professionals with the tools they need to better understand and respond to new financial market challenges of the twenty-first century.

Keywords: Governance; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Institutional Investing; Financial Services Industry;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Eccles, Robert G., J. Herron, and George Serafeim. "Promoting Corporate Sustainability through Integrated Reporting: The Role of Investment Fiduciaries and the Responsibilities of the Corporate Board." Chap. 31 in Cambridge Handbook of Institutional Investment and Fiduciary Duty, edited by James P. Hawley, Andreas G.F. Hoepner, Keith L. Johnson, Joakim Sandberg, and Edward J. Waitzer, 403–415. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

The case describes the challenges that UBS faced as a result of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation for tax fraud, that claimed that UBS had helped some 52,000 U.S. residents hide billions of dollars in untaxed assets in secret Swiss accounts between 2000 and 2007, depriving the U.S. Treasury of hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes. Why did this happen inside UBS? What were the incentives and the corporate governance failures that led to these events? How should the board of directors of UBS respond to the requests of the tax and regulatory authorities?

As sustainability issues, also labelled environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, become financially material, companies, investors, and regulators are designing strategies and policies to improve sustainability disclosure and performance. In this paper, we outline a framework of how sustainability issues become financially material arguing that materiality is not a “state of being” but a “process of becoming.” Our framework could assist companies and investors to make resource allocation decisions based on expectations about future materiality, social entrepreneurs and NGOs to develop their theories of social change, and policy makers to design disclosure regulations. Moreover, our framework generates predictions about the conditions under which sustainability issues become financial material that could be empirically tested in the future.

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Promoting Corporate Sustainability through Integrated Reporting: The Role of Investment Fiduciaries and the Responsibilities of the Corporate Board

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